Hi,

You know, when you’re little, your parents have high hopes for you. In general, parents always have high hopes for their children. Not that they want them to become the astronauts or ballerinas or Presidents that the children themselves want to be, but they do want them to be successful and happy in life. That’s because they love them.

Well, if you have a loved one with bipolar disorder, you naturally want them to be just as successful and happy too. That’s because you love them just as much. But can you love them TOO much? Well, can a parent love their child too much? If you have children, ask yourself this question. Parents are accused of spoiling their children all the time.

I know a man who is a very successful and prominent attorney in Florida. In other words, he is very wealthy. And this man has two daughters. He has raised his two daughters to be what most
people would call spoiled. But if you ever talked to the two young girls (teenagers now), you would find them to be respectful and intelligent young women who had healthy self-esteem and values in life and good goals as well. So, is that spoiled?

Yes, they’ve been to Europe and went to private schools and all, but they also learned to do chores and to respect their parents and other adults. So it’s a matter of how you look at things.
How you learn to look at things.

You learned to look at things one way, while your loved one, because of their bipolar disorder, may have learned to look at things another way. They may have a very negative view on their days because of their past, what they’ve gone through because of their disorder. They may have come to expect more bad than good, in other words.

But for you, things are probably different. You probably have a better outlook on things. The thing is, if you give in to the way your loved one looks at things, you will be spoiling them. It’s better to bring them around to your way of thinking than to let them bring you down into theirs.

You may not have bipolar disorder, so you may not have bipolar depressive episodes, but that
doesn’t mean that you can’t still suffer from depression. Your loved one’s behavior can affect you. It’s all in how you look at things.

If you let your loved one bring you down, you CAN suffer from depression, to be sure. You CAN get discouraged as a bipolar supporter. I know, because I went through it when I was
trying to help my mom.

I also know because I get emails and letters all the time from supporters who have loved ones
with bipolar disorder who say that they are getting depressed and are scared that they are “catching” their loved one’s bipolar disorder. Now, although it’s not true that you can “catch”
your loved one’s bipolar disorder, it is true that frustration and discouragement and feelings like
it CAN lead to depression, even if you don’t have bipolar disorder.

So you need to keep looking at the bright side of things. You need to keep hoping that, as long as your loved one stays on their treatment plan and medication, that they will recover from their bipolar disorder and that things will get better.

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave